A judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to terminate a Biden-era program that granted legal status to migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti.
The ruling, in federal district court in Boston, prevents the wholesale shutdown of the program, which was set to expire on 24 April.
It has allowed more than 500,000 people to legally enter and work in the US since its inception.
“[Migrants] would be forced to choose between two injurious options: continue following the law and leave the country on their own, or await removal proceedings,” the judge, Indira Talwani, wrote in her ruling.
The program, established under the previous administration, allowed migrants from those four countries to legally enter and work in the US for up to two years if they had a financial sponsor and passed security checks.
The Biden administration had framed it as a strategic measure to reduce illegal border crossings by creating legitimate pathways to entry.
The Trump administration had moved aggressively in March to end the program, giving participants less than a month’s notice before their legal status expired. It argued the plan exacerbated issues with immigration by granting protections to “a substantial population of aliens in the interior of the United States without a clear path to a durable status”.
The latest legal setback for the Trump team comes amid broader efforts to roll back other immigration protections, including those for thousands of Cameroonian and Afghan migrants – who would face being sent back to the Taliban after siding with the Americans – by either May or June, and a separate attempt to revoke temporary protected status for Venezuelans, which has been blocked for now by a federal court.
